Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The U.S. government is launching a $50-million effort to enable supercomputer-powered climate models to deliver regional impacts

BETTER MODELS: The U.S. government would like to develop computer models that would allow for regional predictions for the impacts of climate change, such as how sea level rise might impact the East Coast.

Nobody lives in the global average climate. Nor are the massive grid cells favored by climate models run on today's supercomputers as useful as they could be for planning purposes, given that they can encompass 10,000 square kilometers. Now the National Science Foundation (NSF), along with the U.S. Energy and Agriculture departments are teaming up to financially support the development of new computer models aimed at revealing the anticipated effects of climate change at the regional level.